Big data analysis from 50 million commuters in 47 countries across Europe, The Americas and Asia reveals cities with longest and shortest journey times, wait times and changes needed on journeys.
LONDON – The public transport app Moovit has announced reaching a significant company milestone of 50 million users globally, and unveiled its highly anticipated Global Transit Usage Report, the first big data analysis of its kind in the world that has tracked millions of trip requests across cities globally in an unprecedented effort to map global travel trends.
The results from the colossal amount of data analysed portray a colourful picture of how we travel around our cities. It has revealed that the UK has the longest total daily commute time in Europe. Sitting at the top of the chart were travellers in Birmingham who on average commute for 94 minutes every weekday, closely followed by Manchester at 89 minutes and Londoners at 84 minutes.
By comparison commuters in Berlin and Madrid enjoy an extra half an hour to themselves every weekday with total travel times every week day of 62 minutes – a full 30 minutes less than Birmingham – closely followed by Parisians’ average daily commute of 64 minutes with Barcelona enjoying one of the lowest overall journey times at an enviable 50 minutes every weekday. Commuters in Manchester however can seek solace in the fact that their daily commute times are similar to those in New York City which averaged 87 minutes every weekday. Singapore journey times mirrored those of London at 84 minutes.
For extreme commutes the UK tops Europe and has the highest percentage of journey times over 2 hours (38% in Birmingham, 31% in Manchester and 30% in London of trips were over 2 hours long). More than double the amount of extreme commutes in other European cities including Paris (15%), Madrid (15%), Milan (14%) and Berlin (14%).
It’s a good job that the Brits are well known for their patience while waiting in queues, as UK cities suffer from the highest percentage of waits at stops of over 20 minutes. Manchester tops the bill where a staggering 28% of commuters waiting for longer than 20 minutes at stops during their journey. That figure is just 10% in Berlin by comparison.
The data also revealed that of all the cities in the UK, Londoners are more likely to change line during their travels with nearly a quarter (23%) of all commuters having to switch 2 or more times per journey – by comparison only 14% of journeys in the Manchester metro area had 2 or more line changes.
But Londoners shouldn’t despair at the number of changes during their travels. Overall they top the charts for the shortest total walking distance required per trip, with an impressive 30% of journeys including a total walk of less than 250 metres. In Manchester and Birmingham only 15% of journeys enjoy a short walk, reflective of the large and plentiful public transport options for citizens in the UK’s capital.
The total travel times and distances were similar in the large UK cities although 54% of Birmingham journeys were under 5km, as opposed to 48% in Manchester and 46% in London.
Moovit VP of Products and Marketing, Yovav Meydad, said, “No other transport app or service has as much rich and relevant data about the world’s public transport users as Moovit, and we’re proud to share some of it in our annual Global Transit Usage Report. We derived the data from our Moovit community of more than 120,000 local editors and contributors, and a user base of more than 50 million commuters. Moovit enables people to travel smarter in their cities, making journeys more reliable with the provision of highly accurate real time information.”
The Moovit report is concurrent with the company’s surpassing 50 million users worldwide, continuing the company’s meteoric growth. Moovit closed its first year of operation, 2013, with 3 million users which quadrupled to 12.5 million in 2014, and surpassed 32 million last year. Moovit predicts it will end 2016 with 52 million users as 2 million people now download the free public transport app each month.
Meydad said the data was collected over three months (August-October 2016) from among tens of million trip plans logged by Moovit’s 50 million users in more than 47 cities globally.
“Our Public Transit Usage Report from the Big Data analysed daily has revealed some fascinating insights about how we are traveling on local transit around the world,” Meydad said. “From the potential wait times between transfers to how long it takes for us to get to a stop, data extracted from the journeys of our users paint a colourful and hugely valuable picture of the infrastructure supporting the day-to-day commuting and travelling habits of residents and visitors.”
Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
